1. How long have you been making films and who are your biggest influences?
I have been making films since I was 10 years old, so for 17 years. I made a rip off of the film ‘Split Second’ when I was 10 and then an environmental documentary when I was 12 and I started college at 16 for 3 years studying film where I made a variety of music videos, documentaries, and art films. Once I finished college at 19 I started making short films, the first being Obsession. I started my first feature film (Woods of Terror) when I was 20 and completed it when I was 21. I am very inspired by independent films, especially horror, I like films that shock me, stand out and make a big impact, usually because they are controversial. I am a huge fan of the video nasties. Some of my favourite films include: Cannibal Holocaust/Irreversible/The Beyond/A Serbian Film/Anthropophagous the Beast/New York Ripper/I Spit On Your Grave (original)
I find Andreas Schnaas/Lucio Fulci/Sam Raimi/Ruggero Deodato & David Cronenberg very inspiring because of their works and careers.
2. How many films have you made that are distributed and who are they distributed with?
I have 12 features distributed, Naked Nazi is distributed by SRS Cinema, Sick Bastard/Home Made & Tortured (aka Sex Slave) are distributed by Maxim Media International and the rest are distributed by Chemical Burn Entertainment that include: Woods of Terror/Tales of Terror 1 & 2/Cut & Paste 1 & 2/Home Made 2 The Footage/Troubled & Tormented.
3. What would you say to filmmakers out there who may be struggling and want to give up for a career in retail?
I would say to stick at it, even though it can be very tough. I have had some extremely bad times making films, mad enemies, had financial problems, bad reviews that can hurt etc, but I love making films and it keeps me happy, there is no other job that would make me happy and content. As for making a living out of it, well it is nice but to survive I do my far share of corporate videos, live events, and even doing a bit of teaching filmmaking, the royalties on my features are not enough to keep me going, and I always find that I end up putting a bit of money back into making a new film. You have to stay strong and keep at it, not everyone is going to like your film but don’t let knock backs stop you from carrying on, everyone gets them, even very big and established directors can make a stinker. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing your finished film complete and your vision come to life.
4. Tell us about your latest film the Turning?
The Turning tells the story of a man called Dillon who is trying to escape his past when he is thrown off track by an accidental meeting with his old flame Stacey. Soon they rekindle their love for each other, but desire gets the better of them and while they make love Stacey’s husband Michael rudely interrupts this passionate affair. Acting on instinct Dillon takes to his old ways as Michael begins to beat Stacey and therefore pays the price with his life as Dillon reacts with his gun!
This is only the start of Dillon’s journey to hell as when they go to dump the body Michael has become the un-dead and soon Stacey and Dillon find themselves in the world of the living dead, a bounty hunter and an underground Nazi organisation lead by Ilsa (Eileen Daly) who is behind everything!
Passion leads to desire, desire leads to murder, and murder leads to The Turning. The Turning is a film born out of both desire and frustration. I am an independent filmmaker who has done most things I have wanted to do in my career apart from get my big budget and make my epic movie! I have played with various sub-genres of the horror scene and messed around with styles. I wanted to make a new feature film as I always like to have a film on the go, but recently finances and various factors make it hard to get a movie off the ground, when taking on most of the job roles yourself there is so much to do, get locations, get actors, and pay for it all! My best friend and business partner Kemal Yildirim was pushing me to make a new flick as he wanted to work on another one of my crazy ventures, and he wanted to explore his acing roots again. So as time passed I came up with a rough outline for a concept for my new film. I had made zombie short films, and worked on other zombie features, and funny enough I had a reputation for zombie films as I had made a 10 minute short film ‘Zombies in the Wood’ that won best film in 2004 and had also made a super 8 controversial rape zombie flick ‘Revenge of the Dead’ that caused some outrage as we had a zombie penis made! Anyway after all this I had not actually made a zombie feature film and so I wanted to get this out of my system. The original idea for the film was about 2 people, a man and women stuck in a shack in which the women had been bitten and slowly turning, hence the title ‘The Turning’. I pitched this to Kemal as he would be playing the main lead and he loved it, we bounced ideas off each other and suddenly the film grew and grew more epic! Kemal gave me the opportunity to make the film I had in vision as he came on bored to produce the film with me, and he helped me gain the cast, locations, and fund the film. I was the only main crew, with Kemal helping when he could, but most of the time he was in front of camera, I had a make-up artist ‘Jenny Buckland’ doing all the crazy gore and she had her assistant ‘Becky Stone’, and my wife Sharon Impey helped with some stills and behind the scenes filming, the rest was down to me to undertake. In the end I decided to do a dogma 95-style shoot like I did with my earlier feature film ‘Troubled’. Rami Hilmi who plays ‘Quaid’ came to set to choreograph a massive fight showdown with himself and Kemal’s character ‘Dillon’. This fight grew and grew. Through out the shoot Kemal managed to get Eileen Daly on board to act in the final scene that was the final 2 days shoot. I decided when I was going to film dogma 95 style that I was going to approach the film in a documentary style and shoot the film in a shocumentary style, a bit like ‘Faces of Death’. This is a style I wanted to explore more of and so used this film to play with that, and I liked the adreliane and buzz you get from this, as you never quite know the exact result you will end up getting! ‘The Turning’ was fun to make but as every film it was not without its problems. The radio mic broke half way through day 7’s shoot and ended up in me having to stop the shoot why we spent hours trying to fix it, and ended up having to borrow one why our one was sent off for repair, but we managed to get the shoot back on track. I was most worried about the weather as half the film takes placed outside, but fortunately we was very lucky as the weather was perfect. I tried to shoot the film in order as the way I was shooting it, but due to the complex scenes and the fact that half the film plays as black and white flash backs through out this became more and more difficult, so we ended up shooting all over the place and that made continuity a real pain, but it appears we managed to stay on top of it. As always with my films ‘The Turning’ has become a very controversial movie that twists and turns, and is hopefully one of those films that you can watch multiple times and get something new from it each time. I have made my political statements through out the film, but I don’t want to give too much away as it is a very bizarre mix of art house and exploitation filmmaking in which not all is what it seems, and hopefully the story is not too predictable, it will keep you guessing the whole way through. It certainly is not a typical zombie film, as I have tried before I have mixed a few sub genres so it has elements of old school zombie films mixed with the Nazi sexploitation video nasties.
5. What does the future hold for Jason Impey?
I am currently re-editing my feature film Home Made under the title Home Made Redux that is a new version altogether, I have revisited all the old rushes and recreating the film I originally set out to make back in 2006. After this I have a few features planned that I want to make and will concentrate on one at a time, hopefully getting bigger budgets and better distribution.
6. what do you want to say to the fans.?
I am very appreciative of all their support and enthusiasm for my films, and it is that which encourages me and pushes me to get my next film into production. I hope you enjoy my future films and I will keep making films for the fans by a true horror fan, myself.
Slices of Life set to be released by Midnight releasing this June is an amazing indie Horror anthology and in my opinion is right up there with the likes of Trick r treat or Creepshow. Slices of Life starts of with a young girl who cant remember who she is exactly she wakes up one day with 3 books each in which represents a different day in life. The books are called Work life, Home life, & sex life all of which tell a story that makes up the anthology. Work life is about a lonely man who works at a nano technology firm who unleashed a deadly virus in the office on the computers giving new meaning to corporate zombie, next up is work life this is my personal favorite and its creepy to, rarely does anything in any indie film creep me out like this movie did. Work life tells the story of a pregnant wife married to a police officer who is investigating 4 local child dissapearances, meanwhile his wife is having ghostly visions I wont spoil it, but it all connects in the end great story. Finally sex life about a girl who has an alien parasite inside her that devours any man she has sex with like a wood chipper lots of gore here, The movie looks great this is no SOV junk and the f/x were amazing some cgi and some great make-up make for a fun ride, i recommend slices of life... Midnight releasing has really out done themselves this time and has been putting out some great stuff.
